“The sisters?” said Mrs. Penton. An inexpressible sense of dislike, of displeasure, of repugnance came over her, as if some passing wind had carried it. “Not that sharp girl,” she said, with a look of fastidious dissatisfaction--something that moved the lines of her nostrils as if it offended a sense.
“Not the sharp girl, and not the boy,” said Russell Penton. “But then who is left?”
“My godchild is left, Alicia, the one I like best; or, rather, whom I--”
“Dislike least,” said her husband, with his laugh. “I can not see, now that everything is likely to be settled to your satisfaction, what possible reason there can be for disliking them at all.”
“There is none,” she said, with an effort. “I am the victim of a state of affairs which is over; I can not get my feelings into accordance with the new circumstances. You can not blame me, Gerald, more than I blame myself.”
He said nothing at all in reply to this, but turned away as he had done with the intention of going out, when she called him back. Once more she recalled him, with the same dull sense of his disapproval aching at her heart.
“Gerald, after all, you see I do not even wait till things are settled to ask the children. Give me a little credit for that.”
“You said, Alicia, that it was to please me.”
“And so it is! and so are many things--more, a great many more, than you think.”
He put his hands upon her shoulders and looked into her face. “You are always very good, very kind, and ready to please me. Is it for that I am to give you credit? or for generosity toward your young cousins? You are not very logical, you see.”
“Women are not supposed to be logical,” she said.
He gave a grave smile as he took his hands away. “Women are more logical than they acknowledge,” he said. “It is a convenient plea.”
And this time there was no recall. He went out without any further hinderance, not much pleased with himself, and perhaps less with her. He was not, as she divined, satisfied at all. Rich Mrs. Penton’s husband had as little devotion to Penton as had poor Mr. Penton’s wife. He felt that he would have been more at his ease in any other house, and a subtle sort of rivalry with Penton, antagonism partly irrational, and disappointment in the thought that Sir Walter’s death, when it came, would bring him no enfranchisement, filled his mind with an irritation which it was not always possible to keep under. He did not want her to do this scanty justice to her young relations, her only relations, in order to please him. They had done no harm; why should it be an offense to her that they had in their veins a certain number of drops of kindred blood? Presently, however, this irritation turned into displeasure with himself. He had been hard upon Alicia; he had asked that the young Pentons should be invited, vaguely, without any particular meaning; and she had said she would ask them at once, along with the heiress, the great prize for whom so many were contending. It had jarred upon her when he laughed, and it now occurred to him that his laugh had been ill-timed and out of place; yet all alone as he was, when it came back to his mind he laughed again. Why not? he had said--and why not? he repeated with a gleam of humor lighting up thoughts which were not particularly pleasant in themselves. He, a poor scion of the Russells, had carried off the Penton heiress; why should not young Penton, the poor and disinherited, have a try at the other, the Russell heiress? But if Alicia saw the reason of his merriment, no wonder that it had jarred upon her. It was in bad taste, he said to himself. To compare her with the little Russell girl was a thing which even in thought was offensive. He did not wonder that she was offended by his laugh, that it made her stiff and cold. He sighed a little as all inclination to laugh died out of him. It would have suited him better to have had a mate of a lighter nature, one who would have let him laugh, who would have been less easily jarred, less serious, less full of dignity; but this was a thing that Russell Penton was too loyal even to say to himself. It might touch the surface of his thoughts, but only to be banished. It was because of this inevitable jar, this little difference, which was so little yet was fundamental, that he sighed.